AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Felicity Harlow.
My lips make the shape of it, whispering it in the quiet air of my living room. It’s a beautiful name. A name that I can imagine myself saying.
I wish she’d told me herself.
There’s a moment of bright, painful regret that I dug even this deeply. I doubt Asha will take it well, if she ever has occasion to find out that I know her name, that I know that she used to live in St. Louis, that she passed through a handful of other major cities and stayed briefly before making it to Chicago, where she’s been since. I can track that path with the photos of her at other clubs, and it’s clear that she wasn’t always the sort of high-priced escort that she is now for Nikolai. It doesn’t matter to me what she used to do—but I feel as if it might matter to her that I know.
I shut the laptop, a bit more firmly than strictly necessary, frustrated with myself for being this torn up about it. I wouldn’t have thought twice about digging into anyone else’s past if I felt it was warranted, so I shouldn’t balk at doing the same with Asha.It’s not as if she was ever going to tell me anyway.
Don’t go back for a third night.I know that’s the first step in extricating myself from this. What would happen if I did, anyway? Another night of teasing, another night of Asha dancing around how much she wants me, taking out her frustration on both herself and me like it’s a game, like I’m not spending just about every waking moment wondering how it is that I managed to fall so hard and fast for this woman when there hasn’t been one girl inyearswho has held my attention for more than a few nights.
I don’t want the games. I wanther, and she’s made it clear that’s not possible. The evidence of that was just right in front of me—an entirely separate life that she would never have told me about, an identity that I would have never known. Our relationship exists in that weirdly sterile room in the Ashen Rose and in the times when I take her to and from Matvei, and nowhere else.
It will never exist anywhere else, no matter how I feel. And I feelfrustrated. It’s the only word I have for it. Mentally, emotionally, sexually. Hell,physically, considering the fact that I haven’t gotten a decent night’s sleep since I met her, it feels like. And I can’t seem to just pick up a woman and fuck Asha out of my system, if that poorly handled situation with the woman I met at Charlie’s bar is any indication.
I simultaneously want her more than I’ve ever wanted anyone in my life, and I know that I can’t get in any deeper. It’s driving me crazy.
She’sdriving me crazy.
I decide then, looking at the laptop, that I won’t go back to the Rose tonight. I’ve never felt like I needed to detox from a woman, but there’s a first time for everything, I suppose.
There’s no future for Asha and me—not even a brief one. The sooner I start forgetting her and remembering that, the better.
No matter how hard it might be.
—
Somehow, I manage to keep that resolution. And when I see Asha getting out of the Uber in front of the garage where I’m waiting for her like last time to take her to Matvei’s, I realize that it didn’t change a damn thing.
Seeing her still sucks all the air out of my lungs. She’s wearing tight matte leather leggings and heavy lace-up boots, a loose black tank top made of some slippery material hanging down to her thighs. I see a hint of black lace under the thin straps, peeking between the waves of her hair as she strides towards me. She’s wearing that red lipstick, and the first thing I feel after that initial gut punch of remembering just how much I want her is a red-hot flare of jealousy at the thought of that lipstick smeared over Matvei Kotov’s cock.
He doesn’t deserve her. Hell,Idon’t deserve her, but that arrogant, upstart prick of a man is the last one on earth who ought to get to put his hands on her. But he’s going to get the privilege tonight, and as many nights after as it takes to get the information we need—the worst part of it all is that I set this all up.
How this makes me feel is my fault, and no one else’s.
“Finn.” There’s nothing sweet or seductive about the way she says my name when she walks up to where I’m standing by my motorcycle. Nothing to make me think that she’s thinking about—or even remembers—that the last time we were standing here, the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife, that all I wanted was to put her over the seat and fuck her blind. Nothing to indicate that she’s thinking about the fact that two nights ago, I felt her come around my fingers while she jerked me off onto her perfect, smooth skin.
It’s not personal.Her voice slips into my head, reminding me of what she said that same night. Reminding me that she does that all the time—probably forgets it promptly, as soon as she leaves work to go home. Clocking it and clocking out—that’s all it is. Meanwhile, I’ll be dreaming about her hand wrapped around me and the sight of her biting her lower lip as she cried out for me for the rest of my life, it feels like.
“Are we leaving?” Asha’s lips press together. “I told the driver to wait since you said to meet here. I don’t want to be late.”
I clear my throat, trying to push down the well of emotions, to make this alljust business, the way it’s supposed to be. “I want to reaffirm that you really want to be doing this,” I tell her gruffly, focusing on what I talked about with Theo, and not how her standing in front of me, within reach of my hands, close enough to pull in for a kiss, makes me feel. “If you want to back out, Asha, we can figure something out—”
“I don’t.” Her voice is even more clipped and curt. “Can we go, Finn?”
Hearing that from her feels like a different kind of gut punch. But she’s right, and I know it. This was always supposed to be a business deal, and just as I chose to stay home last night to emphasize that separation, she’s doing the same now by putting this firm distance between us.
That doesn’t make it any easier, though. The way she’s looking at me, the way she sounds, it’s as if we never touched. As if we never did anything at all other than had a conversation in a coffee shop, and it’s hard to reconcile how that makes me feel.
“Let’s go.” I get on my bike, revving up the engine, and when I turn to look for her, she’s already getting back into the Uber.
Whatever there was between us, she’s doing her best to bury it. I should do the same.
Everything plays out just as it did before, once we get to Matvei’s. I follow her in, trying not to let the way I’m seething inwardly show on my face as he takes her by the elbow and steers her down the hall to that same room, with me following in their wake. I try not to think about what they’ll be doing for the next two hours, try not to imagine all the permutations of various forms of depravity that he might want from her.
I try not to picture him with her, and it feels impossible. Asha was right, of course—the more intimately I know her, the more I can envision the way she looks in the throes of pleasure, the way I can still feel the heat of her clenched around my fingers, the more I know of how it feels to have her touch me, the harder it is to stand here, pacing in the hallway, and endure knowing that Matvei is doing the same and more.
If I fucked her, I wouldn’t be able to stand it. The fact thatfuckingseems like too crass a word for what I want to do with her should tell me all I need to know when it comes to how I feel about Asha—or how much more distance there needs to be between us for this to work.
